” We have to think about ways in which we’re going to be organizing and we’re going to be putting ourselves in positions of power to ensure that books are not banned.” – Dr. Ibram X. Kendi
Banned Books Week (September 22-28) is an annual celebration of our right to read. This year’s theme is “Freed Between the Lines.” In recent years, the American Library Association has also observed Right to Read Day, a National Day of Action in support of the right to read.
We are proud to work with authors who are fighting for freedom of expression and open dialogue. Our speakers challenge the notion of restricting or banning these indispensable books that encourage free-thinking, allow for self-expression, and uplift the stories and experiences within their pages.
Isabel Wilkerson
Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the critically acclaimed bestsellers The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste
Isabel Wilkerson’s New York Times-bestselling Caste explores the unspoken hierarchies that divide us across lines of race and class. It has been pulled from libraries in Texas because it generates “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of race.”
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi
National Book Award-winning historian and author of How to Be an Antiracist
One of the top 10 most challenged or banned books of 2020 was Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped From the Beginning because of claims that the book contains “selective storytelling incidents and does not encompass racism against all people.” The winner of the National Book Awards for Nonfiction, Stamped From the Beginning follows five historical figures and offers readers unwashed versions of who they were and the role that racist ideas played in their lives. Dr. Kendi has spoken out against the banning, saying that “kids today need the types of books that are being banned.”
Download the ALA’s Book Résumé for Stamped from the Beginning
Marjane Satrapi
Academy Award-nominated director, cartoonist, and author of Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi’s prominent graphic memoir Persepolis recounts her early years living in the capital of Iran during the turbulent events of the 1970s and 1980s. Persepolis has stirred up controversy for its political viewpoints and has been challenged due to claims of “graphic language and images that are not appropriate for general use.” Satrapi has criticized the ban, reiterating that her book doesn’t teach readers to be violent or to hate.
Download the ALA’s Book Résumé for Persepolis
Garrard Conley
Author of the bestselling memoir Boy Erased
Garrard Conley’s New York Times-bestselling memoir Boy Erased traces the complex relationships among family, faith, and community. In his heart-breaking, at times triumphant story, he speaks about love, compassion, and understanding. Speaking about how his book has been placed on a banned list in Texas, Conley urges people to protect books and argues that banning books is never a good thing.
Download the ALA’s Book Résumé for Boy Erased
Mohsin Hamid
Bestselling Author of Exit West
The Pakistan-born internationally bestselling author of Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia takes on ethnic identity, class disparity, and mass-urbanization in his bold, inventive work. Winner of the Betty Trask Award, a Pen/Hemingway finalist, and shortlisted for the Man Booker twice, most recently for Exit West, Mohsin Hamid has quickly emerged as a clarion voice of his generation.
Download the ALA’s Book Résumé for Exit West
Jennifer Egan
Pulitzer Prize-winning Author
Jennifer Egan joined the PEN America Board in 2012 and completed her term as president in 2020. As the president of PEN America, she advocated for the goal of celebrating writing and defending the freedoms that make it possible. In her 2018 Literary Hub piece, she wrote that “few would dispute that the suppression of writers presages deep and ominous problems in a society.”
R.J. Palacio
#1 New York Times bestselling author of Wonder
R.J. Palacio took the children’s literature world by storm with the publication of her debut novel, Wonder, a #1 New York Times bestseller that has sold over 1 million copies in North America. In her talks, she advocates for kindness and uses Wonder to address anti-bullying in schools. Her second project, the graphic novel White Bird, was wrongfully banned for the possibility of it leading to a “skewing of a young child’s mind.”
E. Lockhart
New York Times-bestselling author of We Were Liars and inventor of DC Comics superhero, Whistle
E. Lockhart is the beloved author of fiercely intelligent novels that explore issues of morality, feminism, and heroism. Her 11 novels include We Were Liars, which was a break-out success and a #1 New York Times bestseller. Her novel Real Live Boyfriends, the fourth novel in her Ruby Oliver series, has appeared on banned books lists due to its discussion of consent and slut-shaming. E. Lockhart has spoken out against the banning, stating that “books [do] not need to be full of morals all the time in order to be valuable”.
Sabaa Tahir
National Book Award winner and #1 New York Times-bestselling author of An Ember in the Ashes and All My Rage
Former journalist Sabaa Tahir burst onto the YA scene with her #1 New York Times-bestselling novel, An Ember in the Ashes. In 2022, she made history as the first Muslim and Pakistani-American woman to win a National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for her novel, All My Rage. The banned novel is an unforgettable and heart-wrenching contemporary novel about family and forgiveness, love and loss, in a sweeping story that crosses generations and continents.
Ruta Sepetys
International bestselling author of Between Shades of Gray and Out of the Easy
In 2011, author Ruta Sepetys published her debut novel, Between Shades of Gray, a poignant account of Joseph Stalin’s ethnic cleansing in the Baltic countries during WWII as seen through the eyes of a 15-year-old Lithuanian girl. Between Shades of Gray went on to become an international bestseller and one of the most acclaimed novels of the year, landing on numerous Best Book of the Year lists, including those from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Publishers Weekly with prose “restrained and powerful.” After Between Shades of Gray was incorrectly prohibited, Sepetys began traveling the country to speak out against book bans.
Jean Kwok
Award-winning author of Girl in Translation
As a little girl, Girl in Translation author Jean Kwok emigrated from Hong Kong to New York, where—despite working long hours in a Chinatown factory—she excelled in the classroom, eventually graduating from Harvard and Columbia. Her novel, Girl in Translation, is a fictional piece based on her experiences as an immigrant, such as the setting of the sweatshop she worked in and the difficulty at school. She calls the attempts to ban her book the “historical echoes that are most terrifying.”
Colson Whitehead
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead is the critically acclaimed, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of eleven works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Underground Railroad (winner of the 2016 National Book Award and 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) and The Nickel Boys (winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), in which he discusses complicated political and racial history. The book was banned for its “graphic depiction of slavery.”